I am severely lactose intolerant. Not that I hold a personal grudge against the dairy based complex sugar, it’s just that my digestive system has decided it doesn’t want to deal with it anymore.
If you didn’t know, lactose, as I mentioned above, is a complex sugar found in dairy milk made up of the simple sugars glucose and galactose. For the majority of people, when the consume dairy products their digestive system produces an enzyme called lactase which is the key to unlock the two simple sugars from lactose. For those of us who don’t produce enough lactase to split lactose into its simple forms, the lactose continues on its merry way through the digestive system and ferments, kind of like beer. You can imagine the rest.
So enough of that.
As a result of this situation, I am constantly on the lookout for lactose on the ingredients list of the foods that I eat. That could be in the form of milk (any kind), cheese, whey, whey protein concentrate, (whey protein isolate apparently has very little, if any lactose), etc.
I am also on the look out for substitutes such as soy based cheese and sour cream. There are also a few 100% lactose reduced products on the market, such as Lactaid brand milk, and the store brands of lactose reduced milk.
Which leads me to the subject of this ramble. I heard ads for Yami brand yogurt on the radio, that said it was lactose free. So every store I went into I looked for Yami yogurt. None to be found. Not Safeway, Albertsons, Fred Meyer or Metropolitan Market. So after nearly a year I got the bright idea to look up the Yami website to see if they listed where it was sold. Sure enough, QFC and Top Foods carry it. There is only one QFC that I can think of in Tacoma, on Bridgeport Way.
So I went to the Top Foods by Highway 16 and Union Ave., and sure enough, there it was. Two flavors in the large (32 oz.) size – raspberry and strawberry. And they are both gooood. And considering I haven’t had yogurt for a long time, it was really enjoyable.
So there you go, if you are lactose intolerant, or even if you aren’t, Yami lowfat, lactose free yogurt gets two thumbs up from me. And maybe a toe, too.
